SA surf outlook Mar 6

I’m calling this the “Home and Away” forecast, because if you’re reading this it means you are either:

a) not going away on the long weekend, and looking for whatever scraps you can get within 70km of the Adelaide GPO

b) going somewhere outside SA and looking for some positive reinforcement that you made a good call ( spoiler alert… you did ).

Here’s the latest synoptic chart, just in case you are interested in such things.

There’s a lot of rain over the East coast and troughs all over the country, but all we really care about is that fat HIGH that’s parked its arse SW of Adelaide. That sucker will dominate the weather over the long weekend, and as far as surf goes, it won’t be dominating in the “awesome” way.

At least we’ll escape the dreaded Southerly winds early on Saturday as the wind kicks around to the ESE.  The Mid Coast will be clean, but dead flat. West facing breaks over at Yorkes also look pretty sad, Pondie might manage 1′ waves if you’re lucky. The last few days will leave the South Coast pretty messy, and early Saturday it’ll be lumpy and thanks to a fading swell, around 2′ at Middleton.

Sunday is not looking epic either with The Easterly airstream continuing. The swell will miss the Mid Coast for the 64th time this year, but it’ll be nice and clean. West facing Yorkes breaks will mostly suck, and the South Coast will be lumpy with the shitty wind. Middleton is looking like remaining in the 2′ range.

The last opportunity for long weekend glory, Monday, doesn’t look a whole lot better. The wind will still be from the East at 10 – 15 knots almost all day, the Mid Coast will still be flat and Middleton will only be around 1 – 2′. Yorkes will finish the weekend in similarly poor form to which it started.

Just to throw a curveball, you’re probably better off heading South-East of Adelaide over the long weekend, especially if you’re still in a funk about what to do to find waves. Robe – Beachport ( and beyond ) have done better over the last few days than much of the rest of the state, so it’s worth rolling the dice with petrol under $1.20 a litre. Worst case… just drive another 4 hours to the Surf Coast.

As if to mock us, Tuesday morning will offer SA the first whiff of North in the wind. The lumps will persist on the South Coast thanks to days and days of Easterlies, but a Nor-easter after lunch will do its best to straighten it up. The swell will come in a bit more westerly so expect only around 1 – 2′ surf at Middleton, but Parson’s will be a bit bigger and nice and clean for much of the day. The Mid will finally see a glimpse of new swell, waves might even get to a foot by sunset. West-facing breaks over at Yorkes will be OK after lunch.

We’ll finally see Northerly winds on Wednesday, so grab it because it might be your only chance this week. The West in the swell will persist and cap size  a bit on the South Coast, but there still could be some clean 2 – 3′ waves after lunch. This is probably the best day in the period to hit Yorkes. Even the fickle Mid Coast might score a few waist-high waves, and better tides will hopefully give it a push.

On Thursday the wind will probably be back to the SE so the South Coast will be over, but west-facing breaks over at Yorkes should be good and the Mid Coast might manage a few 1 – 2′ waves.

Looking ahead, a good WSW swell appears to be lining up heading into next weekend – but let’s see how that pans out after the horse race no-one will go to.

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